Description
Teaching Delivery: This module is taught in 10 weekly 2 hour classes.
Content: This module will focus on reading and discussing primary sources in translation and it is a broad-sweep survey of Roman literature, covering the principal authors and genres and starting from the beginnings of early Latin literature, through the Republican period and into early Imperial Rome. This course is intended as an introduction to Latin literature and theoretical approaches to literature, and it aims to provide students with a chronological and thematic framework for further study of ancient Latin literature. Topics will include the Roman theatre; satire; Roman epic and challenges to epic; historiography; lyric and love poetry; declamation and oratory; and the birth of the novel.
Weekly classes take as a starting point selected readings from major authors; the format is mixed lecture and discussion. Students will be expected to equip themselves with specified translations of some works, which are cheaply available in paperback; other texts will be supplied as handouts.
Skills: By the end of the module, students should be trained in close reading, analysis of form, content and context, synthesis of ideas and the ability to present written and oral conclusions about a complex body of data in a coherent fashion.
Introductory reading: S. Harrison (ed.), A companion to Latin literature (Malden, MA, 2005), P.E. Knox, - J.C. McKeown (eds.), The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature. (Oxford; New York 2013)
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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